The Wire

[Orang Utan]

It's set in Baltimore and it's about a bunch of dealers and a bunch of cops who put a wire tap on them, but it's more than that

 

[rennie]

it's all about the game

 

[mrsfran]

I'm into a good box set , whats this one all about. I've never heard of it?

Seriously, get it. You won't be disappointed.

 

[Orang Utan]

Season 3 just arrived in the post - yippee!

 

[Belushi]

Season 3 just arrived in the post - yippee!

I watched it recently, fucking excellent mate.

 

[oddworld]

Seriously, get it. You won't be disappointed.

I'm on the case

 

[trabuquera]

season 4 (now showing on FX in the UK, if you have access to it) is just getting better and better ... the production values, script, plotting, acting, shooting etc just as class as ever ...

heartbreaking, though. (i don't dare say more for fear of spoiling it for the rest.)

Just to repeat: FINEST TELEVISION EVER MADE.

 

[Crispy]

It's a Golden Age of television at the moment, it really is.

 

[Dan U]

season 4 (now showing on FX in the UK, if you have access to it) is just getting better and better ... the production values, script, plotting, acting, shooting etc just as class as ever ...

heartbreaking, though. (i don't dare say more for fear of spoiling it for the rest.)

Just to repeat: FINEST TELEVISION EVER MADE.

Season 4 is

Finished it months ago and I can't wait for the last Season *sobs*

 

[Santino]

It's a Golden Age of television at the moment, it really is.

QFT

 

[rennie]

Man the scene between String and Avon at the end of Season 3 is pure gold. It left me a bit .

 

[8den]

I'm into a good box set , whats this one all about. I've never heard of it?

Walking the streets of west Baltimore you end up with glass in the soles of your shoes. There is a gentle, ever-present crunch beneath your feet. In fact, were it not for the battered houses and boarded, blackened windows that surround you, it might almost be possible to imagine you were treading the softly gravelled forecourt of a millionaire's mansion. The shards of glass are everywhere, a glittering, iconic symbol of Baltimore's implosive and murderous heroin problem. The smack is sold in tiny, colourfully topped vials that look a little like Christmas tree decorations. Once used, they are discarded, alongside bloody, blunt needles. In street talk, this ghastly carnival debris is known as "dead soldiers". The people who still live here - the dealers, junkies and civilians who haven't fled as yet - all wear hiking boots and heavy-duty designer sneakers. No one wants a dead soldier splintering in their feet. Next to the fear of murder there is the terror of "the bug", HIV/Aids. No one wants to be a dead soldier.

Baltimore, situated a few hundred miles south of New York on the north-eastern seaboard, is one of the most dangerous cities in the western hemisphere. Like Liverpool, a city of roughly the same size, Baltimore once earned its money through its busy docks. When the docks went the same sorry way as America's manufacturing industry, unemployment soared. Baltimore became a heroin town, perhaps because heroin, with its analgesic capacity to make users become benignly resigned to anything life may throw at them, is the poverty drug par excellence. This would be tragic enough had the drug trade not been accompanied by a gruesomely exponential rise in violent crime. In London the murder rate is 2.1 per 100,000 inhabitants. In Liverpool it is 1.9. In Baltimore it is an astonishing 41.8, a statistic that rises dramatically when you leave the city centre and head toward its crumbling Victorian rowhouses and godforsaken projects. It now has the unhappy honour of jostling for the number-one position as America's most violent city. Most of the murders are drug-related. Rival enforcers take down local enforcers. The victims' minders kill the people who killed the victims. One act of barbarism is met by another. Then there are the men who earn their money stealing from the dealers and pissing off everyone. This would be a dangerous occupation anywhere, but in Baltimore it's more than often deadly. More dead soldiers.

Baltimore's drug-infested streets and 47,000 abandoned homes are the backdrop to David Simon and Ed Burns' brilliantly observed drama, The Wire, a tour de force that dissects America's self-destructive and increasingly asinine war on drugs. First screened three years ago on the US cable channel HBO, and recently seen here in Britain on FX289, the drama chronicles the lives and deaths of Baltimore's dealers, drug addicts and police officers. Simon and Burns always set out to write something that would have the subtlety, moral ambiguity and grimly panoramic vision of the modern American novel and they are clearly proud of what they have achieved. The Wire is indeed novelistic but it is also chillingly realistic. Everyone I meet in Baltimore, from businessmen to skinny little street kids, praises the drama's veracity. One junked-up 17-year-old I spoke to had this to say: "The Wire is the truth. The only unrealistic thing 'bout The Wire is that no motherfucker in The Wire watch The Wire. Cos in Baltimore, man, everyone watch that show." Newsday may have called it "breathtaking" and "excellent" and the San Francisco Chronicle described it as "the best show on television, period", but compliments don't come much higher or better informed than from a west Baltimore junkie.

In The Wire, the detectives charged with investigating west Baltimore's dealers are for the most part a bunch of clock-punching drunks and semi-likable knuckleheads who get their kicks discussing internet porn and unleashing Rodney King-style beatings on the local population. Initially they appear to regard police work as an unfortunate occupational hazard. More sinister still are the men who reluctantly bring this band of apparent no-hopers together. Here we are witness to a baleful but cynical coalition of commanding officers so obsessed with meeting targets they would rather ignore a potentially unsolvable murder than have it hang in the air and foul up their clear-up rate. Drug dealers are unlikely to report their crimes, and witnesses are even less likely to come forward, so if no one bothers to investigate, no crime has been committed. Thus The Wire sets up a bizarre and disturbing dance between the upper echelons of the police force and the drug barons they are supposed to be fighting.

The detective fighting all this self-serving intrigue is Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West). Pitted against him are careerist cops, the politicians of city hall and the truly disturbing figures of Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell, two drug barons who run a criminal empire so ruthlessly efficient it is almost invisible. Below them are the gangs of misbegotten, near-feral children who sell their drugs. To lend the drama a further level of anarchy and menace we have Omar, a gay, shotgun-wielding sociopath who robs drug dealers by blowing off their kneecaps and is, on at least one occasion, seen wearing a T-shirt sporting the slogan, "I am the American dream."

from here.

The Wire, a drama so rich in character and nuance, and so powerful in its anger and painful with its humour that it has been compared to the darkest classics of literature. It is no coincidence that some of America's most accomplished novelists (such as George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane and Richard Price) have written for its first four seasons. Nor was it a surprise when the New York Times wrote: "If Charles Dickens were alive today, he would watch The Wire, unless, that is, he was already writing for it." The difference in The Wire however, is that there is no kindly old gentleman to set things right.

From here

 

[crossfire]

is it showing at all on any english channels?

 

[Chuff]

loved season three watching prison break before steaming through 4 horray for tinternet

 

[Dan U]

is it showing at all on any english channels?

SFX

Or box sets/torrents

It's really worth starting at the beginnning

 

[8den]

SFX

Or box sets/torrents

It's really worth starting at the beginnning

Don't even try not to. You need to watch in all through three times.

 

[Orang Utan]

The quotes of 8den are so completely accurate. The danger of this show is overhyping it, but it is so really is that good. There really is no over-hyping it Believe the hype! It really is that good. But then there is Deadwood, which is another show that defies superlatives. You just can't fault it. Watch them. I have no torrents. I've just bought every series on DVD for only £18. You're worth it.

 

[rennie]

I'm going to go back and watch all three seasons again. Anyone know when number four is gonna make it on DVD?

 

[Belushi]

But then there is Deadwood, which is another show that defies superlatives.

Cock Sucker! San Francisco Cock Sucker!

 

[Orang Utan]

I'm going to go back and watch all three seasons again. Anyone know when number four is gonna make it on DVD?

There is no number 4

 

[Belushi]

There is no number 4

Fourth season is on FX at the moment.

 

[Juice Terry]

There is no number 4

Yes there is!

 

[rennie]

Indeed there's season 4 AND 5 to look forward to!

 

[Orang Utan]

Fourth season is on FX at the moment.

Oops - sorry I had my Deadwood head on

 

[Dan U]

Cock Sucker! San Francisco Cock Sucker!

<3 Wu

 

[May Kasahara]

Nothing to add to all the richly-deserved superlatives already heaped upon The Wire, but I feel compelled to confess that I'm shamefully obsessed with Jimmy McNulty

 

[maximilian ping]

halfway thru series 3. need next fix. how can i see series 4? can't find dvd of it and have not got cable

 

[marshall]

If you can’t get your hands on series 4 (but you want more of the same), try reading ‘The Corner: A year in the life of an inner-city neighbourhood’ by Wire head honchos, David Simon and Ed Burns.

It’s a fat book detailing a year on ‘the corner’ in West Baltimore and it’s absolutely fantastic. It’s set in exactly the same ‘hood, so it’s nice reading about Fayette/Vine for real…in fact, you can spot elements of all the characters in the Wire series in the true-life characters that Simons and Burns hung around with for over 5 years.

For example, Gary, one of the main real life characters MUST be the template for Bubbles and so on and on…

 

[Belushi]

If you can’t get your hands on series 4 (but you want more of the same), try reading ‘The Corner: A year in the life of an inner-city neighbourhood’ by Wire head honchos, David Simon and Ed Burns.

It’s a fat book detailing a year on ‘the corner’ in West Baltimore and it’s absolutely fantastic. It’s set in exactly the same ‘hood, so it’s nice reading about Fayette/Vine for real…in fact, you can spot elements of all the characters in the Wire series in the true-life characters that Simons and Burns hung around with for over 5 years.

For example, Gary, one of the main real life characters MUST be the template for Bubbles and so on and on…

There was a HBO mini-series a few years back which unfortunately hasn't been released on dvd in the uk yet.

 

[kyser_soze]

Halfway thru S3...TV that feels more like reading a REALLY good book, especially when watched back-2-back, whole seasons at a time